Library at Alexandria Discovered?

dustmote writes "According to the BBC, a Polish-Egyptian team believes they may have discovered the Library at Alexandria, including ancient lecture halls or auditoria, in the Bruchion region of the city. It's said by some that the burning of the library set civilization back as much as a thousand years."

Comments

More on the Mouseion

[DrSkwid]

Carl Sagan did some work on the
ancient Library of Alexandria, the Mouseion, for his TV series Cosmos.

Re:Likely to have been late 4th-century

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Yup. This is a half decent book on the subject I read a few years back. The $64,000,000 question is of course "who burned it down?"

Re:wonder where we be with it.

[rempelos]

Well, most of the world wasn't Catholic, so they were free to develop science without any interference from the Church... Did they? No.

Well, the first christian Roman emperors (way before the separation of the Church to Catholic and Orthodox, when the roman empire was practically the whole world), closed the University of Athens and suppressed any ideas of that time that would question the beliefs of their religion (and not just in greece but in alexandria too). Just to mention that greek philoshophers and mathematicians had formulated theories about material, earth and space that are very close to todays most accepted theories. Plus that they had developed science of medicine, had compute the perimeter of the earth etc.

The point I was making was that science derives from the Catholic "mode of thinking". So a lack of Catholicism wouldn't have improved the situation.

When Catholism was created, the world was already towards dark ages. The way that the christians were enforcing their beliefs is to take the blame for that. And... oh, yes, it would

So you have a problem with the defense of Christian pilgrims who were being attacked by the Turks?

Read your history books again. The crusaides were made to recapture the holy lands and in the mean time butcher, loot and impose their religion.

First, there wouldn't have been any such (Muslim) Arab doctors if there were no Catholic Church, since Islam is a Christian heresy (based on Arianism and Docetism, if I'm not mistaken).

You are mistaken. Islam is not straightly related to christianity, maybe Mohammed borrowed things from christians or jesus but it didn't have any relation with what christianity had evolved to in Europe

Re:Likely to have been late 4th-century

[dublin]

It is also worth remembering that much of what did survive out of the destruction of classical learning was eventually preserved and re-transmitted to a deeply ignorant and religiously hidebound Europe several hundred years later through the hands of the relatively liberal and learned muslim arabs...

Your bigotry is showing.

There is no doubt that learning was lost after the fall of Rome. Knowledge was preserved through intervening centuries in several unlikely places far afield. Before you blast the Christians for this, perhaps you should know that much of the ancient knowledge that was saved was in fact preserved by the chirch itself. This included much from Arab and other eastern sources that was lost even in the east when the far-from-civilized Mohammedans deliberately destroyed anything they judged heretical, which by definition is pretty much anything other than the Koran and the Hadith.)

You might want to read How the Irish Saved Civilization to get an understanding of how the church in Irelend was actually instrumental in maintaining a library of this information through the turbulent times of the incorrectly-named "dark ages", and then re-seeding that information throughout Europe. A good book, worth a read...

Awsome discovery

[kbahey]

Well, it is my home town. I was born and raised there many moons ago.

Anyway, to give some perspective and background:

• Here is a Map of Alexandria.
• The Brucheion would be on the promontary that is just east of where "Raml Station" is marked, facing West.
• Where it says, Qaitbay Fort still stands today, and is said to be on the site of the famous Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the world, and build using the stones from its ruins.
• Just at the base of the promontary, the new library of Alexandria recently opened.
• The original library was most probably burned during the Roman attack of the city.
• The story of the Arabs buring the library is inaccurate and discredited by most historians.
• There was another daughter library at Pompey's pillar (which was not built by Pompey by the way). This one survived for 4 more centuries, but was plundered by Christian fanatic mobs. The same mob dragged the philosopher/mathematician/priestess Hypatia
• Here is another map of underwater artifacts
• Yet another older map from 1855 depicting the battle of Alexandria on 1801 between the French and the British.
• Franck Goddio has done extensive marine archology excavations in the eastern harbor and other places in Egypt (Abu Qir for example). Interesting photos there, including this map of underwater buildings and artifacts, and an artist view of the same.

Egypt is floating on archeology, literally. It is very common to find amphorae and stuff when digging foundations for buildings.

Oh, and by the way, here are some pictures from the city today, focusing on the electric tramways, two types, narrow carriage for downtown, and a wider one for the eastern parts.

I miss it!